Floca, Brian (1969-…), is an award-winning American Illustrator of picture books for young children. Floca’s illustrations have been praised for their attention to detail and their sense of humor. Floca won the 2014 Caldecott Medal for Locomotive (2013), a story about a ride on the first intercontinental railroad in the United States in 1869. The Caldecott Medal is an annual award given by the American Library Association to the illustrator of the most distinguished picture book for children published in the United States during the previous year.
Locomotive is one of several picture books Floca wrote and illustrated that explore kinds of transportation, as well as the people who operate them, who ride them, and where they go. The books include Five Trucks (1999), about trucks of different shapes and sizes; The Racecar Alphabet (2003), which explores the various elements in automobile racing; Lightship (2007), about a ship that warns other vessels of dangers during storms; and Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (2009), about the rocket ship that carried the first astronauts to land on the moon. Keeping the City Going (2021) pays tribute to essential workers, who kept cities going during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Floca illustrated many books by American children’s authors. The most notable are a series of animal fantasy novels by Avi about a deer mouse named Poppy. The series, called “Tales from Dimwood Forest,” began with Poppy (1995). In addition, Floca illustrated Uncles and Antlers (2004) by Lisa Wheeler; The Hinky-Pink (2008) by Megan McDonald; Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring (2010) by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan; Kate Messner’s novels about an adventurous third-grade girl named Marty McGuire, beginning with Marty McGuire (2011); Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas (2014), a novel about an elephant seal, by Lynne Cox; and Princess Cora and the Crocodile (2017) by Laura Amy Schlitz.
Brian Floca was born on Jan. 11, 1969, in Temple, Texas. He received a B.A. degree from Brown University in 1991 and an M.F.A. degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2001. While at Brown, Floca also took classes at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design. Floca began his career illustrating Avi’s graphic novel City of Light, City of Dark (1993). A graphic novel is a book-length story that combines pictures and text.
